Bandai Will Stop Shipping Anime to Retailers In NovemberKen Iyodomi, who is the president of Bandai Entertainment, sent us over a letter this morning to give us a heads up on what we've known has been coming and just never had a date for.

He writes:

"I am writing to inform you that Bandai Entertainment Inc in discontinuing its home video publishing and distribution business effective March 1, 2013.

As we methodically wind down the business, the last day that Bandai will be accepting any purchase orders is November 15, 2012, with our last shipments occurring on November 30th, 2012.

On Behalf of Bandai Entertainment Inc, I want to express our gratitude for the opportunity we've had to do business with your company, and I think you in advance for your understanding and assistance during this period."

Well, we all knew this was coming up. While Bandai's remaining catalog of Anime release will 'officially' go out of print in November, I just want to remind everyone that quite a few of their SKU's have already stocked out and others will probably sell out prior to the Nov cutoff, so if you need to pull the trigger on any of their stuff, don't wait too much longer.

This also means that current backorders for existing products are less likely to be filled, but we will do whatever we can to bring in as much Bandai stock as we can afford to between now and November.

Several people have written in a little confused about Bandai's announcement last week that they will stop shipping to retailers in November. Most people want to know "what's going to happen to all their titles"? We'll here's the deal - effective Nov of this year everything in Bandai's DVD and BD catalog will officially go out of print (as will their entire selection of manga in October). Bandai has said they intend to shop some of these licenses out, but that process is likely to be slow and their back-catalog is just way to big to be absorbed into the market by the rest of the industry as it stands, so while it's likely that a few of the premium licenses will eventually end up getting re-released by someone else (hey Sentai, please pick up K-On season 1, OK?), I imagine most of their catalog will simply go dark. Now that doesn't mean that all their releases will just vaporize in November - retailers like us are currently scrapping together as much money as we can find to do big final buy-ins on Bandai's remaining stock, and at least for us, we're hoping to stock some of their titles pretty deep assuming we can get them. Over the next 6-12 months I would expect prices to rise for OOP Bandai titles that end up getting bought up quickly and become a little harder to find. This will, of course, result in the same bitching and moaning characterizing any price increases as greed and averice from the usual suspects who couldn't be bothered to pull the trigger on these titles for the many years they were available at the regular prices. Oh joy, I can't wait to read those people comments! ) But I also expect prices to decrease for a time on the titles that retailers choose poorly on and end up bringing in too much stock.

And before you ask, I have no idea what will become of Gundam - that series is an awfully big bite for another studio to try to take on. I fear the chances now that we'll ever see ZZ, Victory, or Turn a Gundam released in R1 are now pretty slim. ~sigh~

Anyway, we're going to go through the site during for the next couple of weeks and mark all Bandai releases as 'discontinued - limited to stock on hand' and also we'll be publishing a list shortly of all in stock Bandai titles so that you can see if there is anything you need before the lights go out in November.

I believe that is handled directly by Bandai Visual itself (Bandai Japan). So I expect continued released since Vol. 5 was released after Bandai Entertainments (Bandai USA) announced of ceasing to release to titles.

Anyone know if there's a comprehensive list of titles published by Bandai that will be affected by this somewhere? I don't know of anything that I want that I don't already have right off, but that doesn't mean that there aren't things I don't even realize are published by them...

I believe that is handled directly by Bandai Visual itself (Bandai Japan). So I expect continued released since Vol. 5 was released after Bandai Entertainments (Bandai USA) announced of ceasing to release to titles.

Anyone know if there's a comprehensive list of titles published by Bandai that will be affected by this somewhere? I don't know of anything that I want that I don't already have right off, but that doesn't mean that there aren't things I don't even realize are published by them...

All bandai titles except Gundam Unicorn, which is being handled by Bandai Visual (Japan).

Hmm, wonder if this means prices for some of this stuff going through the roof.

Probably. What I'll be curious to see will be whether someone else will pick up at least the more popular series like Cowboy Bebop and Gundam. With the Cowboy Bebop blu-ray set due out in Japan in December, this is an inopportune time for the series to be going totally out of print here...

I guess this means once Bandai's licenses are up for some of these shows, it means Funimation and Sentai can grab whatever they want. I can see Funi taking Bebop and whatever else they think they can profit from. Sentai will probably grab K-ON! S1 since they already have S2. That leaves other big titles such as Haruhi, Gurren Lagann, the entire Gundam catalog they dubbed, Lucky Star, along with old school classics such as Big O and Outlaw Star up for grabs.

And yes, the prices for all these will without a doubt skyrocket until someone else re-releases these titles. Until then, decide what's worth getting, and wait for whatever you aren't too interested in.

Found a seller selling a region-free complete series of G Gundam with both English and Japanese voices for $29 on Ebay. Saved like $35 if I would have bought from Right Stuf. If anyone's interested there are still 5 left.http://www.ebay.com/...=item2eb81643c7

Found a seller selling a region-free complete series of G Gundam with both English and Japanese voices for $29 on Ebay. Saved like $35 if I would have bought from Right Stuf. If anyone's interested there are still 5 left.http://www.ebay.com/...=item2eb81643c7

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